Latest News

(updated 1/19/18)

Our space microbes flew to the ISS on April 19th, 2014. Check out the microbes that flew here, read about the results of the "Microbial Playoffs" here, and see how the microbes grew in space compared to earth here! NASA also maintains a page describing the project here.

Just out in December 2017 was our analysis of the microbes already living on the International Space Station (paper here).
Still to come is our analysis of the 3000 cell phone and shoe samples taken from participants in Project MERCCURI.

Publications:

-Here's a paper describing a new species of bacteria (Porphyrobacter mercurialis... get it?) that we discovered during this project, and that we sent to the ISS. And here's the paper describing the genome of that species.

-Here is our publication describing the scientific results of the microbial playoffs, and here's a short paper describing the genome of the one bacteria that appeared to grow better in space.

-Here is our publication describing the microbiome of the International Space Station itself.